Empty
by limegreenwordmachine
Summary: Sometimes all we need is to feel empty.


Time seems to slow dramatically when one is drowning.

She is drowning in shock and grief – they are a tangible mixture in the air, filling up her lungs and refusing to be breathed back out again.

She sees the white casket in the front of Ferryport Landing's only church. It's surrounded by white Easter lilies – It's late April.

She sees none of the Bible verses painted in gold on the whitewashed walls, none of the people kneeling in the pews and crying their own tears. She can only stare at that simple, gleaming box ahead of her. It's the only thing her brain can decode.

Sunlight streams through the windows, casting an eerie afternoon glow over the interior of the church.

A tear creeps down her cheek, over her chapped lips, and drips off of her cheek to land on the aging hardwood. She feels the weight of everything that's befallen her in the past four years as she raises herself off of the pew and walks down the aisle. She has to see that face one last time.

The hands are folded neatly over the stomach. The dress is clean, flowered, and utterly girlish. The shoes are clean and white, polished and perfect. The hair is brushed to the point that it gleams. It spreads in two braids across the cushion.

Daphne looks clean and perfect. No one could know that her death was even slightly violent.

But Sabrina knows the horrible truth.

Some might say Daphne looks to be sleeping.

But Sabrina would say she just looks…dead. Perfect, clean, untarnished. But utterly lifeless, a wax doll in a box.

In a few hours, this box will buried six feet underground, beneath the soil in Ferryport Landing's only cemetery. Sabrina nearly chokes on the lump in her throat that rises when she thinks of her younger sister under the ground, packed away forever. The lump grows and a film covers her eyes, fresh tears cascading down the skin of her face like raindrops.

She forces herself to turn around and quietly walk back down the aisle. Step after step, breathe in, breathe out. Remember not to stop breathing in and out. In and out. In and out.

She looks back at the casket and feels as though she is leaving her sister behind.

How did the one thing she tried so hard to protect slip straight through her fingers? Why couldn't she hold onto her little sister?

Breathe in, breathe out. In and out. In and out in and out inandout inandoutinandoutinandout….

She's suffocating in the silence. She sees her parents, kneeling and clutching white-knuckled hands. Granny Relda, Canis, Uncle Jake, Charming, and Snow White kneel nearby.

Her steps accelerate and she shoves open the door to the church, racing down the steps and away from the parking lot. Into the adjoining meadow, where she sits, resting her head on her knees, and begins to sob.

It isn't a pretty, delicate, movie-like sort of sobbing fit. She doesn't gasp delicately for breath and the tears don't fall delicately down. She puts her head on her knees and wails. She lets her nose run and her eyes squint together as tight as they'll go. She pulls up bits of grass and digs her fingers into the dirt.

Daphne will never bounce down the stairs again to demand breakfast. She'll never ask to borrow lip gloss to feel grown up, or giggle, or bite her palm…or…

So many things.

"Grimm?"

Puck's voice is tired and he sounds old.

She doesn't look up. "Go – away," she says between gasps for breath.

But he doesn't. He moves her arms from around her knees and pushes her outward to look at her face, which is puffy, red, and wet. Then he pulls her in close and wraps both arms tightly around her, whispering into her hair. "Everything will be okay."

She's too tired and angry and confused and sad to care that it's Puck. She doesn't care who's holding her. She simply clings to the folds in the back of his blazer, buries her head in his shoulder, and continues to cry.

"That's not Daphne in there," he says quietly. "Daphne's way past all the problems down here. She's up in heaven waiting for us. That's just her shell. She never has to feel any kind of pain again."

He's never been so sure of that one fact before in his entire four thousand years.

She looks at him with desperation in her eyes, tears still streaking her face. "You really think so?"

He nods. He does think so. He hugs her again and runs a hand through her hair. She needs an entirely different kind of help than he's used to giving today. Today she doesn't need to be plucked from the path of an oncoming train. She doesn't need a dragon slayed for her or ropes cut away from her wrists. She needs a friend.

She turns around and looks across the landscape, dotted with spring wildflowers. The sun is peeking out – just barely – from behind the clouds. She stretches out her legs toward the sunlight and kicks off her shoes, watching them fly in arcs. He settles her so that she's sitting with her back resting against him and his arms around her again.

She stays there for many long minutes. "I want to go home," she says quietly, breaking the lengthy silence.

"I can go tell them we're walking back."

"You'll walk back with me?"

"Yeah."

She moves, allowing him to get up and return to the church. She doesn't want to go back in. She stands up and rubs her arm across her eyes before searching for her shoes in the tall grass. The soil feels wonderful between her toes. A wind blows comfortingly.

Puck returns from the church. "They said we can go on without them." He spreads his wings and prepares to pick her up and lift off, but she holds out a hand.

"No," she says quietly. "Let's walk." She just wants some time to think, and flying will be too quick.

He shrugs. "Fine."

They set off down the road in silence, Sabrina carrying her shoes at her side. The wind waxes and wanes, sometimes ruffling their hair and sometimes making it blow behind them, off their faces.

Sabrina likes the feeling of the asphalt under her bare feet.

She likes the feeling of the hand Puck reaches out to hold hers. She likes the feeling that all the tears are cried out, that all the sadness is put away for now.

She'll have to drag it back out and face it again later. But for now, she's just…empty.

Empty can be a good sensation sometimes.

So she clings to Puck's hand and continues to walk into the distance.

They're going home.


End file.
